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The Maple Leaf rearview mirror would reveal too many painful what-if and if-only scenarios on a morning-after of reflection.

What if Matt Frattin’s slapshot in overtime hadn’t clanged off the post behind Tuukka Rask?

What if Phil Kessel hadn’t lost the puck to Zdeno Chara in the corner in the 73rd minute?

What if Mark Fraser hadn’t taken a puck in the forehead earlier and been sent off to hospital, requiring coach Randy Carlyle to shuffle around his rearguard tandems, which left over-matched Ryan O’Byrne as the only defender back in a fateful 2-on-1 rush?

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And if only Dion Phaneuf hadn’t pinched inside the blue line, simultaneously lining up Nathan Horton for a bone-rattling hit while trying to contain Toronto’s attacking thrust in the Boston zone, a clot of bodies colliding, the puck squirting free to Leaf-killer David Krejci?

Would it have turned out any differently in the end?

On the bench, Leaf players could taste a Game 4 win. It was there, beckoning, seductive. Over and over, as the action swung up and down, they were coming within an eyelash of scoring, 11 shots from all angles thrown at the Boston net in OT. The Bruins, vastly more playoff worldly-wise but also considerably older than their upstart opponents, were clearly on their heels and tiring.

But the Leaf captain gambled and what happened next everybody knows.

It was a goal that should have been stopped if more astutely handled, rather than eyes darting indecisively between the puck-carrier and the decoy line-mate trailing a half-step behind. A top flight goalie is expected to steal a game now and then. And only Kessel, among the most unlikely of back-checkers, had hustled in pursuit, using his extraordinary speed in a failed bid to avert disaster looming.

Phaneuf shouldered the burden and he was most evidently blunderer-in-chief. But the blame was not solely his.

His teammates let him know that afterwards in the dressing room, before the media invasion, when their captain stood in their stunned midst and said: My fault.

He’d skated more than 31 minutes on 37 shifts, thrown 11 hits, blocked six shots, induced three saves from Rask. None of that would matter though, in the self-flagellation of regret.

And yet the sun still came up on Thursday morning. It always does.

“I haven’t seen it out there yet but I’m sure it’s there,’’ Phaneuf agreed, offering a wry smile.

Whether he’d slept much overnight Phaneuf didn’t say. Nor was there a great deal he could add to what had been said the evening before. Yet there was no avoiding the fact that his error in what became the last gasp of Game 4 might very well have been the seminal moment of this hugely entertaining series, the gaffe that couldn’t be undone, not in sudden death.

The question was asked, shallowly, if he’d grasped the magnitude of his ruinous gambit, its potential impact on what remains of this Eastern Conference quarter-final — as if anybody else on the planet could possibly be more wretchedly aware of its consequences.

“Oh yeah, I did. Obviously, I take full responsibility for that play. Like I said, it’s a mistake at a costly time.’’

He reiterated, for the umpteenth time: “I never like to make a mistake like that. Playoffs are about momentum and that was a momentum swing.’’

There’s a fine line that players have to negotiate between aggressive and foolhardiness, playing bold and playing safe, particularly within the high risk versus high reward dimension of the post-season. It’s made even harder, though, in such a full-throttle take-no-prisoners engagement as Wednesday night at the Air Canada Centre had been.

“Every decision is an important one, especially when it comes down to sudden-death overtime,’’ said Phaneuf. “That was a split second decision … the puck bounces over my stick. It’s a decision I’m not happy about. But we’ve got to move forward. There’s no time to sit here and feel sorry about what happened. It’s done now. We’ve got to focus on Friday.’’

Around the room, teammates expressed nothing but support and solace for their captain. It could have been any one of them wearing the goat-horns. Other mistakes had ended up in the net too. Had Mikhail Grabovski not crashed into Reimer’s crease during a mess of a scrum, Krejci might not have potted his first of three. Had Reimer not surrendered a slew of succulent rebounds on benign-looking shots, Toronto might never have needed to scramble for the regulation tie. Had the Leafs been graced with just a gram of better luck in their frantically energetic third period, 14 saves by Rask, this series would be knotted.

What if and if only …

“It could have been anyone,’’ said Carl Gunnarsson of what had befallen his erstwhile defence partner. “He tried to be aggressive, keep the puck in. It’s a split-second decision and it ended up in the back of our net. But we had chances before that to end the game and we should have scored.’’

Clarke MacArthur, who’d finally dressed in this series and tied the game in the third, noted the distinction between errors of timidity and errors of balls-to-the-wall. “It wasn’t a sitting on your heels mistake. He was trying to be assertive on the play. It’s just a tough break.’’

Hockey is a game of endless frustration and countless misjudgments. “There’s hundreds of mistakes out there every game,’’ noted Jay McClement. “We all make them and when you play those minutes, big minutes for us … he’s been great for us.’’

On this day, Phaneuf’s teammates had his back.

“We’ve got a great team in here,’’ he said. “We’ve got a real close-knit group. We support one another.’’

So onward, perchance to return to the ACC one more time for a Game 6. They’ve won in Boston once already.

“We’ve got to refocus,’’ the captain concluded. “It’s the same as any game in the playoffs –— you take the good from it and move forward, take the bad and learn from it.’’

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